This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book

PHP-Nuke is set up so that storiesnews articles, whatever you want to
call themform a central part of your site. That does not have
to remain the case; if you want your site to focus primarily on downloads,
then make that module (Downloads, that is) the module that appears on your
site's home page and disable the News module completely. But most sites
will want to have a place to post announcements, at least, and the News module
is good for that, too. Plus, whatever module is in the home page must be accessible
to all visitors, and you might want to restrict access to other modules to
just those users who've registered with you (which is free for them) or
subscribed to your site (which might cost something).

Writing a story, then, is a fundamental part of managing a PHP-Nuke site.
To start, click the NEW Story link in the special Administration block (which
only administrators can see). You can also click the Add Story item from the
Administration menu.

The Add New Article Screen

Figure 9.1 shows the top part of the Add New Article screen, which is where
you'll write your story.

Next, select the topic. Now, if you haven't set up your topics yet, you
should do that from the Topics item on the Administration menu. The default
topic, PHP-Nuke, is probably not going to be very descriptive for you. You can
also select associated topics, which might be topics that this story has
something to do with but aren't really the best topic for it. For example,
an article on apple pie would certainly have a main topic of Desserts, but it
might have associated topics, such as Pastries or High-Fat Food. These
associated topics will show up as links when the reader views your story,
helping them find additional, related (at least vaguely) content.

Next, you'll need to select a category. There's only one default
category, Articles. You can think of categories as sort of subtopics, I guess.
To add, edit, or delete a category, just click the appropriate links to the
right of the Category drop-down list. Categories aren't related to a single
topic; all of the topics on your site share the same categories.

Yeah, I know, this is confusing. Maybe an example would work better.
Let's say you have the following topics: Desserts, Entrees, Appetizers, and
Sides. Now suppose you create the following categories: News, Recipes, Meal
Plans, Tips, and the default, Articles. Now suppose you post a new apple pie
recipe: That'd be in the Desserts topic, in the Recipes category. What
about a news article on new heirloom apples? News topic, Articles category. Not
every topic- category combination will make sense (Entrée News?), but you
don't have to use them.

When readers view an article, they'll be able to cross-link to a list of
other articles in the same category or topic, so categories and topics really
just provide a way of organizing articles according to two separate lists. That
way, readers can quickly get a list of recipes or read everything you've
written about entrees.

Okay, hopefully that makes sense. Your next choice is whether this story will
appear in the home page (assuming you've set up the News module to be in
the home page). You can also choose to activate or deactivate comments for the
story, although for comments to be active, the site-wide preference must also be
enabled (I cover those preferences in Topic 6, "Configuring Site
Preferences").

Now comes the fun part. For story text, enter a short lead-in paragraph that
will appear under the story's headline. The Extended Text box should
contain the remainder of your story. And while you can put basic HTML tags in
the story, PHP-Nuke filters out most advanced tags. For example, you won't
be able to embed client-side JavaScript, styles, and so forth.

Finally, you have the option to program the story, meaning that you
can keep it in reserve and have it automatically appear on a specified date at a
specified time. When you're all done, you can preview your story to see
what it will look like, and then go ahead and post it for all to see.